Remember the sci-fi cult classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”? The 1956 movie is about a small town where extraterrestrial “pods” take over the townspeople. Even pillars of the community change into zombielike clones, as revealed by their blank stares and abnormal impulses. Outwardly, though, the “pod people” remain unchanged.

The town doctor, played by Kevin McCarthy, figures out what’s going on, but, as the movie progresses, there are fewer real people to warn. Soon, they’ve all gone over to the Other Side! The climactic sequence features McCarthy, the last free man, running across a rugged landscape and onto a crowded highway to warn the rest of humanity.

True confession: I can relate. Sometimes, gearing up for a weekly column – particularly when it’s another entry in the annals of the Islamization of the West – feels a lot like running onto the highway yelling, “Stop! Listen! It’s coming! You’re next …” The feeling gets stronger still when sizing up what I can describe only as body-snatched impulses in real-life pillars of society. I refer to people in positions of responsibility – in uniform, even – who, by all appearances, are “normal” until – wham! – their eyes go glassy and you realize you’re looking at … a pod person.

Am I kidding? I don’t know how else to explain the memorandum sent out last week by the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. (Well, I do, but bear with me.) Could it have been sent out by a pod person who just looks like a Joint Chiefs chairman? It’s the general’s signature, all right, and his official seal. But the memo itself is from another planet.

In this memo, our highest-ranking military officer orders the entire United States military to purge its educational and training classes, files and rosters of instructors to ensure that no members of the U.S. military are ever again instructed in the basic principles of Islamic jihad. The body snatchers call such allegedly offending educational material “anti-Islam,” but it covers study of Islamic-style war. Given the unchecked threat of such war, both violent and covert, to spread Shariah (Islamic law) until a new global caliphate exists, the question is whether eliminating instruction in the enemy threat doctrine is something a “normal” Joint Chiefs chairman would do. The answer is no. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” strikes again.

It all started this time (there was an earlier round last fall) due to one elective course – “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism” – offered at a military staff college in Norfolk, Va. According to Wired online, this course included guest lectures by Maj. Stephen Coughlin (U.S. Army Reserves). Coughlin is an expert in Islamic law and jihad doctrine (he and I are among the 19 co-authors of “Shariah: The Threat to America”), whose rigorously sourced briefs are legendary in Washington security circles and beyond. Coughlin’s contributions alone would make the whole course worth taking.

When I read that the general’s deputy for education, Lt. Gen. George Flynn, described the course as “inflammatory,” my eyes widened in horror: Oh, no – that’s what a pod person would say! Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey canceled the course, then ordered that top-to-bottom purge. Clearly, only an im-pod-ster would do that.

Dempsey wrote that he was concerned the military was teaching material “inconsistent with the values of our profession, and disrespectful of Islam.” A new review would “ensure our Professional Military Education programs exhibit the cultural sensitivity, respect for religion and intellectual balance that we should expect in our academic institutions.”

How about teaching material consistent with the values of free inquiry and with respect for veracity instead? What is urgently needed is a review to ensure military education offers unflinching threat analysis based on meticulously sourced facts and research. That’s what a “real” Joint Chiefs chairman would demand, not a “politically correct” curriculum designed to subordinate U.S. national security interests to a policy of not offending Islam.